I don't think it is even so much talent based as it is content based. Unless every tank is allowed to AoE tank like a paladin then they will still be preferred for 5-mans. Why spend hours running a heroic with CC when you can fly through one with a paladin? Seed of corruption? Arcane explosion? Multi-shot? Let loose, because a pally will hold agro, and all the mobs just fall over.

I think as has been pointed out, the real failings of a warrior in 5-mans lie almost solely in the expectations of the other players. Can you blame them though? If they are just out farming badges why do they want to slow down to let a warrior prove they can tank it? Obviously a warrior can do it, but who has the time?

All is not lost though, with 2.4 the multi-target talents of many classes are being tweaked so they won't break CC. This is a boon to the desirability of warriors and druids (who are the tanks that use CC in 5-mans). Obviously those talents need to be held back a bit longer than with a paladin tank, but it is still a change that will increase the desirability of other tanks.

I sincerely hope that at some point (the expansion perhaps), something is done to even the playing field somewhat in 5-mans, but I hope that means as a pally tank I can grab something like spell reflect to help my viability in 25-mans. Still to keep the game interesting, some sort of variation needs to be maintained between the available tanking classes.

Also, if ZA is any indication, I think Blizzard might fix the tanking divide in innovative ways. I think the encounters in ZA were designed to FORCE us to use two tanks. I think they were a little surprised at how powerful they made paladins, and never intended that we would be single tanking Kara on a regular basis.

They may do the same thing with 5-mans in the next expansion. Instead of giving warriors better AoE, they might make AoE tanking less useful. Perhaps having pairs of mobs that have to be CC'd or they will buff each other (similar to the way you have to tank the bears mounts apart in ZA).

Itemization can't fix the fact that paladins have no real way to mitigate spell damage. Because of this, the heroic Auchindoun instances are brutal on a pally tank unless you are massively overgeared and/or have two healers and overgeared DPS to make up for the loss. Things aren't all kittens and rainbows on this side of the fence, trust me. Or just ask my buddy Murmur.

...
Krick
http://www.tankadin.com

I am a paladin tank... I have 10% spell damage reduction between improved righteous defense and spell warding, and a 3% increased chance to completely avoid spells from pursuit of justice. On top of that, we are the tanks that can on the fly increase our resistance to fire, shadow, or frost magic by simply changing our aura. With a holy paladin in my party, and a shadow priest in my raid, I have very good spell damage mitigation against the three forms of magic that get thrown at me by the spell shades in Kara for example (which allows them all to be tanked with no CC).

Murmur is kind of a pain, but if you have enough hp, you can just eat a sonic boom. If your DPS is where it should be he won't even be able to get a second boom off, so you could just bubble through the first boom.

The big multi-mob pulls in SL are cake if you just mark the targets to die in the proper order. Kill the acolytes (healers), then the shadow priests (most of the damage), and the rest is cake. Most of the spell damage can be mitigated with shadow resist aura. As a paladin tank I always mark casters to die first, because physical damage dealers are a joke as they kill themselves on my holy shield.

Ooh, I just reread what I wrote. Obviously I don't mean that most of the damage is mitigated with shadow resist aura, but that most of the damage is shadow, so it can help mitigate that (it should really reduce the incoming damage from shadow by about 20%).

No, that is where you are incorrect--the Pillar of Haha in BT proves hands down that Bliz is not paying attention to hybrid itemization. That is the tanking upgrade after the trash drop staff from SSC?

Enhancement shaman will likewise point out the fallacy of this, as they continue wearing hunter mail gear.

Sorry, I don’t think this can or should change. The reason is that a prot tank CAN NOT do the jobs that the pally and druid can. Why are pallys and druids wanted for 5 mans? Duh, because they have AOE! This is simple, and you can find most of this information on good warrior sites. I am a high level prot tank. My threat per aggro is split between every target, I have one AOE every 10 minutes. “If a pally or druid had the same effective health with block that I have, I would have NO spot in the raid at all.” The pally and druid tanks can AOE the trash, I can not. The trash pulls are every bit as important as the Boss. If you don’t get past the trash, you’re not going to see the boss anyway. Why would I be in the raid at all, and what would fix this? The simple answer is, “There is NO fixing this”. If Blizz wanted to make us all the same, and they can, it would ruin the game. Different bosses want different tanks. Bosses where a tanks shield is being used up, are best tanked by a druid. Druids are also the best OT’s because they don’t need as much direct damage to build aggro. Pally tanks are pure AOE, they are designed for such. If a druid or pally tank can MT as good as a warrior tank in equivalent gear, there is NO job or spot whatsoever for the warrior tank in the raid. People need to stop singling themselves out in this game. Our guild could not get to where we are without warrior, pally, and druid tanks.